Lantern Light
by bobtheacorn
Summary: Treasure-hunting with Luffy can be a daunting experience, but she doesn't have a lot of options, does she? / Luffy and Nami and one swinging lantern


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Lantern Light

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The mist comes rolling in, thick and glowing silver in the moonlight reaching down through the trees. Nami shudders and clutches the map to her chest, crinkling the brown parchment. It's been worn thin by countless years of passing from hand to hand and it tears too easily. She quickly, carefully, flattens it out again. The business end of a pirate's life is too hit-or-miss for her liking sometimes, and Nami frowns at the questionable map in her hands as she walks. It's barely legible, and to make matters worse the lantern light she's trying to see by swings backwards, toward her for an instant, then away again.

The metal handle creaks eerily in the night.

And Luffy continues to hum loudly to himself, tone-deaf and pitchy.

He's been humming the same tuneless hum for over an hour, butchering a song he's known for years or one he's just made up to entertain himself - Nami hasn't bothered to ask which. The answer, she knows, will no doubt come with a complimentary headache, so as long as he's occupied and not running off to leave her stranded all alone, he can make as much noise as he wants. Though she would never admit it (aloud, _to anyone_), the cheerful, grating sound is oddly reassuring.

It's the erratic light she can't stand, throwing her in and out - and in and out, and in and out - of the darkness whenever he swings his arms. Nami takes a deep breath.

"Would you stop that?" she snaps.

Luffy stops, half-turning to look at her. He draws out a final long hum inquiringly.

Nami meets his blank stare with exasperation and says, "I can't see where I'm going with you waving that thing around, and I can't read the map. What happens if we get lost? We're already separated from the others!"

"We won't get lost."

He sounds so sure, Nami sighs.

His _everything will work out, so don't worry_ policy hasn't failed them yet, but she has a hard time setting her worries aside so easily.

"Just keep still for a minute, I need to get my bearings. We should be there soon."

Nami comes to stand in front of him, and Luffy holds the lantern up. They both lean over the map, their heads together, and Nami traces her finger along an invisible line that Luffy can't see, even though he squints really hard at the smudged ink and dirty paper. He loves maps - they smell like adventure and he loves adventure, even if there isn't always treasure - but he quickly gets bored with staring at the faded, indecipherable scribbles and shifts his attention elsewhere.

That's when he sees it, looming in the dark to their left and hidden in the mist.

"Hey, what's that big thing?"

He points, lifting his free arm - right through the map.

It splits evenly along the well-worn crease through the middle, where years of folding and unfolding have made it weak and discolored. Pieces, big and small, flutter to the ground unchecked, and Nami's jaw drops with them as she stands there, stunned, clutching the two limp pieces of parchment in her hands. Luffy hears the tear, feels the slight resistance give way against his arm, and turns to look at her, his teeth bared in a wide, apologetic grimace.

"Oops..."

"OOPS!" Nami shrieks, her voice piercing and shrill. Her hands clench into fists, squeezing the remaining life out of the parchment. "_**OOPS!**_ YOU IDIOT, THIS IS OUR ONLY MAP!"

"Well... it's fine, just put it back together! You have all the pieces."

"WITH WHAT, LUFFY! _WITH WHAT!"_

"I dunno, just hold it together, I guess."

"That isn't going to work! The middle's in tatters, just look at it!" Nami says, stretching the two thoroughly-wrinkled pieces out between her hands and holding them up for Luffy to see.

She practically shoves them down his throat and Luffy has to lean back to even look at them. He frowns, his brow knotting.

"We don't need the middle," he says, and raises his hand, "I thought we were over here!"

He jams his finger clean through the parchment.

Nami sucks in an audible breath and Luffy withdraws his hand slowly, his mouth clamped shut and his eyes wide. Nami's hands begin to shake, the paper rattling noisily, and she sinks to the ground in despair, clutching the map.

"Oh, who am I kidding!" she moans, to no one in particular, "There probably isn't even a treasure to find, there never is! I hate being a poor pirate!" She sits up, her rage returning just as swiftly as it fled, to scream at Luffy, "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

The blame goes out to the mist, however, because Luffy is no where to be seen. It's dark, barely moonlit, but she can hear the lantern handle protesting as Luffy moves through the forest and she turns her head to look for him. He's off to her left, holding the lantern as high as he can, and he turns to grin at her, completely undaunted.

Again, he points.

"I saw somethin' really cool over here!" Luffy calls back to her, only pausing for a second before he hurries off.

Left with no choice, Nami scrambles to her feet.

"Well, wait for me! I'm wearing heels!"

She stomps after him, muttering darkly, the ruined map still clenched in her fists as she follows the swinging light through the mist and trees until it stops a short distance away. She finds Luffy standing in the middle of a wide iron gate, hanging off it's broken hinges. His mouth is open, as well, because he's found something _awesome_, and his free hand is on top of his head, holding on to his straw-hat as if he's afraid the awesomeness of what he's seeing will somehow send it flying.

Nami sees nothing to be so impressed by.

Beyond the gate is a yard, and in the yard there are dozens of tall marble statues, all crumbling with age and erosion and covered in lichen. Men ten feet high, wearing billowing cloaks and strange attire, valiantly holding their weapons high, making brave and grim expressions. With the faint moonlight and the mist, it looks ominous and uninviting. Naturally, Luffy dives in at once, his laughter resounding in the night.

He has the sense to leave her with the lantern, and Nami stands at the gate, one hand on her hip as she watches her idiot of a captain running from statue to statue. He climbs on them, and stands staring up at their faces, straining to make the same expressions. He laments - from all the way across the yard and obnoxiously loud - that the others aren't here to see this, and Nami has to admit that Usopp and Chopper would have found it just as enthralling as their captain. Sighing, she sets the lantern on the ground and crouches down beside it, unwrinkling the map again. She flattens it out across her thighs, one half resting on each leg, and stares in dismay at the damage.

The paper has been stretched and wrinkled and the ink is more faded than ever. It's on the verge of tearing again - her temper and impatience with Luffy is to blame, no doubt about that, but she isn't willing to acknowledge that and glares at the finger-sized hole he punched through the left side of the map. Upon looking at it, she realizes his map-reading skills are as bad as his sense of direction: he was wrong about their location (_of course_, she thinks, though the relief is still there), so the part of the map that she actually needs _is _still legible.

_He's lucky,_ she thinks darkly, lifting the parchment from her lap as delicately as possible.

"Namiiii!"

Her eyebrow twitches; she ignores him.

"Hey, Nami! Nami, come look at this! ...Nami! Naaamiiiii!"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT, I'M BUSY!" Nami shouts, looking up and across the yard. She doesn't see him, and Luffy isn't the one who answers - it's a sound, stone scraping against stone, and the alarming sound of it crumbling away, followed by a reverberating crash and Luffy howling in surprise and excitement. Nami lurches to her feet, half the map in her hands and the other half fluttering uselessly to the ground, swaying past the lantern and tossing long shadows. "Luffy!"

She waits for a heartbeat.

Luffy runs out from behind a nearby statue, a moment later, grinning broadly. "Come look what I found," he chuckles, barely able to contain himself. He's covered with dust, and Nami can see the flecks of stone in his dark hair when he stands over the lantern, holding his hat in one hand. "It's really cool!"

He grabs her wrist to drag her away, even as Nami pulls back and reaches down to snatch the lantern up, muttering with obvious reluctance, "Well, what is it? It didn't sound good."

"You'll see, you'll see," is all Luffy says, laughing to himself.

He guides her through the overgrown yard, weaving aimlessly in and out among the towering statues, and Nami finds herself (despite the previous complaints she's lodged) swinging the lantern. She wonders what Luffy's broken this time, and is not surprised to find one of the statues sprawled across the yard in pieces, some as big as her head and others as small as Luffy's brain. She holds the lantern high, planting her other hand on her hip once Luffy releases it to clamber over the massive pile. He stands on the tallest piece, what might have once been a shoulder, and points toward the base that the statue was peacefully standing on before he found it.

He grins, and Nami picks her way forward, looking around.

"I don't see what -"

And then she sees it.

The marble base, wide enough for three people to stand on with plenty of elbow room, has stairs embedded in it. They sink sharply into the ground, only half obscured by the statue's brittle remains, and Nami, for once, smells the same thing that Luffy smells. Adventure - or, in her case, _treasure_. Giddy with excitement, Nami lowers the lantern and looks at the half-map, and then at their surroundings. Nami grins, as well, turning to look at Luffy.

She almost doesn't believe it, but sometimes he hits the bull's-eye without even trying.

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(A/n) The prompt Ched gave me was ROTTING STATUES IN THE PARK. She wrote for Rumbelle, and I wrote for Lumi~ This would have gone in my Pinwheel set (I wrote it ages ago, and I've been on the fence about that this entire time), but it's about 200 words shy of being 2,000 words long and while _right around 1,000 _is an acceptable "drabble" because I'm rambling as hell, 2,000 is pushing it. A little. So here we are! All by ourself. P:

Reviews are appreciated, guys!

-Motcn


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